David's family bypassed the major publishing houses and chose to take the more difficult and time-consuming route of publishing The Jester Has Lost His Jingle themselves. "We wanted to make sure that David's work received the attention to detail and commitment to quality in its production that David brought to its art and words," says David's brother, Michael (Yale, '86). "And that takes a level of time, dedication and care that we felt only we could give it."

David's mother, Barbara Saltzman, adds, "We wanted to publish the book ourselves to ensure that it would be printed with the quality of a fine-arts volume, that it will always remain in print and will be made available to the children David wanted to reach."

The Saltzmans established The Jester Co., Inc., in 1994 as a family corporation to make David's book a reality. Now, with the formation of The Jester & Pharley Phund, David Saltzman's dream of bringing hope and joy into the lives of millions of disadvantaged, ill and hurting children and adults can be realized.

As a family, the Saltzmans have had broad experience in media. Barbara Saltzman was an editor at the Los Angeles Times for 22 years, where she edited the daily Calendar section entertainment pages and TV Times magazine. David's father, Joe, is associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, professor in the USC Annenberg School of Journalism and an award-winning documentary television writer-producer. David's brother, Michael, a film and television producer-writer, was executive producer of "Murphy Brown" and "The Naked Truth."

The publication of the book took a tremendous amount of effort, but Michael says there was never a question in his family's mind about doing it . "Losing David has affected all of us greatly," Michael says. "He was an incredibly loving and radiant personality who touched a number of lives. By publishing his book, we hope to allow him to touch many more."

David wrote in the journal he kept during his bout with Hodgkin's disease that friends and family might feel pain at his passing, but that he would be "like a seed planted in all of them and when they think of me, my memory, my spirit, I would blossom again, live again, be with you again, love you again and be alive within you." Michael suggests that The Jester Has Lost His Jingle is one of the many seeds planted by David. "We just had to nurture it."

"It's been several years since David's death, and there are a lot of people who know me, but never met him. When they ask me about David, I can point to David's book and say, 'There he is. That's David.' My children will know him through the book, too. And he will live on."